This section will inshaAllah cover: the kinds of animals in relation to slaughtering, conditions of the dhabh, and some etiquettes of slaughtering.

Precious Provisions

taught by Yasir Qadhi

Section 2.1: Slaughtering: Categories of Animals

There are three categories of animals when it comes to slaughtering:

A.) Those that require slaughter. That is, if you don’t slaughter the animal, it is haraam to eat it. Domesticated animals come under this category: sheep, goat, camels, cows, etc.

Scholars add that wild, hunted animals have to be slaughtered if it is under your control. For example, if you hunt a deer and it is unconscious, you should do dhabh then and there. Deer are very dangerous if they are conscious; you would just wait for it to bleed out.

There are two types of slaughter:

Dhabh: which is done above or on the Adam’s apple.

Nahr: which is done above the collarbone. This type of slaughter is done to camels, because you cannot lie it down and slaughter it.

B.) Animals that may be hunted. Hunted animals are non predatory, wild animals usually. An example would be the deer. Hunting is a concession. Hunting is done by shooting any part of the animal. The animal is bled to death slowly. This is NOT ALLOWED for cow, sheep, etc. Some basics with regards to hunting (Shaykh Yasir didn’t do a whole section on it because not many people hunt these days…):

A person in ihram cannot hunt.

We cannot eat what the people of religions other than the Abrahamic ones hunt.

You can hunt with birds, dogs[1] and sharp instruments that bleed to death. What is a trained dog? If you tell a dog to stop eating and it stops eating, then it is a trained dog. Why does the dog have to be trained? Because the dog has to be hunting for you and not for itself.

Animal traps are haraam, because they starve the animal to death. Beating the animal is also haraam. A bullet would be allowed because it pierces and bleeds the animal.

Is saying bismillah a condition or not? The shafi’ees say you don’t have to, but the other three say you have to.

What if you are in doubt as to how the animal died? For example, if you shoot an animal and then it falls into the water. How do you know if it drowned or if you shot it? If it died from drowning, then it would be dead meat. Or what if you track a deer you shot and then find it with a pack of wolves around it? Most scholars will say, when in doubt, you must leave it. There is a hadith in which a man asked, O messenger of Allah, What if I send my dog after an animal and then I go and find other dogs there? The Prophet sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam said, “Do not eat, because you only pronounced Bismillah over your dog and not the other dogs.”

C.) Animals that are eaten without hunting or slaughtering. These, of course, would be fish and locusts 🙂 All seafood is halal alhamdulillah – it doesn’t matter who caught it either.